Review of The Great Lie (1941) by Bob V — 05 Apr 2011

Soap opera drama that's lifted above its sketchy plot about two women, both at some point married (though one marriage turned out to be invalid, in grand soap opera style) to the same man, who is now missing after his plane went down, etc etc, anyway: lifted above all of that by Bette Davis & Mary Astor, who got along famously on set, it would seem, and banded together to eliminate a lot of the soap dialogs that were originally writtenfor their characters. Definitely a good move, because the film as it is, works surprisingly well, despite its convoluted plot, and that is mostly because at least the ladies act like reasonably normal human beings would, were they thrust into a rather silly yet grave situation.

Ow yeah, and Hattie McDaniel plays a black maid, believe it or not! No, sorry, no disrespect to Hattie, she does what she does perfectly and I totally love her for etching out a more than respectable career & making the best of the only opportunities available to her in a time when insurmountable limitations deprived her of a chance to explore her full potential. In any case, she is sometimes derided by more hard-core equality spokespeople for 'bowing down to the man' and so on, but I think a lot of actors and actresses owe her a world of gratitude for easing their own way by her efforts, and -let's not forget- for writing Oscar history long before a certain Catwoman did it. And she did it all plus-sized and in comfy shoes, ha!